Notional vs Formal Concord

Here's a question that makes a lot of people hesitate: is it the team is winning or the team are winning? You may have been told there's one right answer — but the honest truth is that both can be correct, and which you choose depends on how you're picturing the group at that moment. Words like team, class, family and government are collective nouns: single words that name a whole group of people. Because a group is one thing made of many people, English lets you agree the verb with either idea. Think of the group as a single block and you use a singular verb; think of the members moving about as individuals and you use a plural one. Once you see that the meaning is doing the steering, these sentences stop feeling like a trap and start feeling like a choice you're in control of.

The idea: one unit or many members?

The whole thing turns on a single question — are you thinking of the group as one lump, or as the people inside it?

Thinking of the individual members → plural verb:

The team are arguing among themselves. (the players, as individuals)

Thinking of the group as one whole → singular verb:

The team is top of the league. (the team as a single unit)

This "match the meaning" idea has a name: notional concord. Concord just means agreement, and notional means "based on the notion, the idea". So notional concord is agreement by sense rather than by strict form — the opposite of formal concord, where you'd match the word's shape no matter what. With collective nouns, English lets sense win.

How to feel which one you mean

A good test is to ask what the group is doing in the sentence. If it's acting together as one — winning, losing, being top of the league, deciding something as a body — the singular usually fits, because the group is behaving like a single actor. But if the members are doing separate things — arguing, putting on their coats, disagreeing, going home in different directions — the plural fits better, because you're really talking about the people, not the block:

The committee has reached a decision. (acting as one body) The committee were unable to agree. (the members, pulling different ways)

Neither is "more correct"; they simply describe two different pictures. The verb is telling your reader whether to imagine one thing or many. A little trick some people find helpful: try slipping the word members or players silently into the sentence. If the team members are arguing sounds like what you mean, go plural; if you'd never add members there because you really mean the club as a whole, go singular. That hidden word acts like a dial you can turn between "one block" and "lots of people", and it settles most cases in a second.

Common collective nouns

You'll meet the same handful again and again: team, class, family, government, staff, group, crowd, jury, band, committee, company, audience, public.

My family is large. (one unit) vs My family are always arguing. (the individuals) The band is releasing an album.* vs The band are all from Leeds.*

A UK/US difference

This is one of the real differences between British and American English, so it's worth knowing. British English happily uses both — the team are playing well sounds completely natural here. American English strongly prefers the singular almost all the time — the team is playing well — and treating a collective noun as plural can look wrong to an American reader. Neither is better; they're just different habits on either side of the Atlantic. Since you're writing in the UK, you can use either, but do choose deliberately rather than by accident.

Watch out — stay consistent

Whichever picture you pick, keep it steady within the same sentence. The one thing you mustn't do is start as singular and finish as plural, because that asks your reader to imagine the group as one thing and many things at the same instant:

✗ The team is playing well and are winning. → pick one! ✓ The team is playing well and is winning. — or — The team are playing well and are winning.

The same applies to any pronouns that follow. If you've said the team is, then it should be it and its later on (the team is celebrating its win); if you've said the team are, then they and their follow (the team are collecting their medals). Mixing them is the giveaway of a rushed sentence, and it's an easy thing for a marker to spot.

Why it matters

Collective nouns come up constantly — in match reports, in the news, in essays about the government or a company or a jury, in stories about a family. Because both forms are allowed, this is less about avoiding an error and more about writing with intention: choosing singular or plural to send your reader a clear picture, then holding it steady. That kind of deliberate control is exactly what stronger writing is made of. It also teaches a bigger lesson that runs right through grammar — that meaning often matters more than the bare shape of a word — and that idea will help you with quantities, tricky subjects and pronoun agreement too. Get comfortable letting sense guide the verb here, and a whole family of "which one?" questions gets easier.

Quick check

Singular or plural — and why?

1. The class ___ (is/are) taking a test. (as one group)

2. The class ___ (is/are) putting on their coats. (as individuals)

3. The jury ___ (has/have) reached a verdict. (acting as one)

4. The crowd ___ (was/were) waving their scarves. (individuals)

5. The government ___ (is/are) introducing a new law. (one body)

6. Fix it: "The band is brilliant and are touring next year."

Where next

• Subject–Verb Agreement — the core rule.
• Tricky Subjects — other agreement puzzles.
• Compound Collective Nouns — group nouns in depth.